Susan Mernit: Oakland, tech, health, wine, writing

In search of a bed: how we bought a king-sized memory foam gel mattress and a new bed frame for under $1,500

When my current mattress started to fail, I got rid of the crappy bed frame and put it on the floor, but that wasn’t a long term solution—we needed a new bed and a more stable bed frame. Our king-size latex mattress that had been moved too many times and kind of taco’ed and bent by low-cost moving folks so it was no better that the really cheap and spindly frame it came with. So the challenge was to replace the old frame and the old mattress at a cost below $1,500. On a budget, we need to end up with a king-sized memory foam mattress (firm) and a decent king-sized bed frame that would hold two medium-sized people without sagging, bulging or making anyone’s back hurt.

Step 1 was to look at the brand we had—Leesa—which my girlfriend had gotten as a floor sample a few years ago. She’d paid a good amount for the Leesa, but it hadn’t lasted well, and she didn’t have a warranty, so we let that go.

Step 2 was to look at the local mattress store and see what the deals were. At Sleep Train, we loved a Tempurpedic King mattress and frame, but the discounted price—after some negotiation—was still $3,200, down from $3,900. That was totally out of our budget—and it was the cheapest mattress they had that we liked.

Step 3 was digging into online options. Lots of people I know have had great experiences buying mattresses online—Casper, Bed in a Box, Purple, Tuft and Needle, among others. GF didn’t care for the Casper when she tried it at a local West Elm (we wanted firmer, not softer), so I looked at Tuft & Needle. The nice human being doing online support shared that the mattress actually was not that firm, so T&N moved down our preference list (even though it was great we could order and then return it).

Step 4 was to crowd-source recommendations via my social media network. The Facebook query I created was absolute gold in terms of all the new information I learned.

It turned out that a number of friends had bought mattresses from the newer mattress companies and had recommendations to share, but, even better, some other friends had a lot to say about mattresses they’d bought—and liked—off Costco and Amazon. One neighbor friend had purchased the exact same Costco Memory Foam Mattress a few friends recommended—and invited us over to actually try the bed IRL. We tested the bed, talked with her, and were sold on both price and comfort. After some discussion, we decided to go with the Costco option, a Novaform Serafina Gel Memory Foam mattress at $949.00

But we not only needed a bed, we needed a bed frame. Our neighbor friends had bought a pretty wooden frame from Charles Rodgers, but the $500-ish was out of our price range.

My GF loved the modern bed frames at Room & Board, but they cost more than $1,500.00.

When I’d spoken to the Tuft & Needle rep, I’d asked about platform bed options and she’d made two referrals—one to the very innovative and cool Floyd bed, which cost $500-ish, and the second to a very basic American Brands metal frame which was just $85.00 on Amazon, discounted from $209.00.

So, in the end, we ordered the metal bed frame off Amazon and the king-sized firm bed from Costco. for a total of $949.00 for the bed, and $85.00 for the bed frame. We ordered both online; the bed frame will get here by Tuesday, and the bed will arrive by the middle of next week.

Our next step now is to give away our current bed, the comfy taco,to someone for whom this Leesa will be an improvement, and then to stagger the set up of the new bed frame and the mattress so we have another surface to sleep on for a couple of nights while the gasses air out. Links for the bed we bought,m and the frame, and the other prospects we researched, are all here below:

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